Stephen
J. Whitfield, a Brandeis University professor, published the first book-length
study of the Emmett Till case. As a scholarly work, it places the murder
in context by providing a thorough chapter on the “Ideology of
Lynching.” He makes use of numerous published and unpublished
sources in putting together his study.

Whitfield offers valuable insight into southern thinking and fears along
the lines of race and sex. As J. Boskin of Boston University points
out in a review for Choice: “Paradoxically, the horror of Till’s
murder made sense only in terms of a caste system that whites took for
granted, yet the lynching occurred at a time when that system itself
was deteriorating.” Indeed, lynchings had been on the decline,
even in Mississippi—all the more reason that the Till murder incensed
the citizenry in that state, if only for a moment. Yet Southern fears
of the “black beast rapist” had increased after the 1954
U. S. Supreme Court decision declaring segregation in public schools
unconstitutional in Brown vs Board of Education of Topeka. Officials
in Mississippi and elsewhere were defiant that they would not obey that
decision, and rhetoric detailing the horror of race mixing increased.
The timing of Till’s actions at the store in Money, Mississippi
coincided with emotions reaching a boiling point over this issue and
the attempts of activists trying to increase the black vote. Whitfield’s
detail of white-black relations in the Jim Crow South, leading up to
Till’s murder is superb.

Chapter two, “Chicago Boy, and chapter three, “Trial by
Jury” detail Till’s abduction, murder, and the trial of
his accused killers. In chapter four, “The Shock of Exoneration,”
Whitfield analyzes the killer’s later published confession and
challenges some of its accuracy, as well as journalist William Bradford
Huie’s reporting (Huie secured the confession for $3,500). In
their confession, published in Look magazine soon after the trial, and
later
expanded in Huie’s book Wolf Whistle in 1959, acquitted killers
J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant characterize Till as unafraid and back-talking
during the kidnapping and entire night of torture and murder. Says Whitfield:
“It is therefore possible that, in talking to Huie, the half-brothers
fabricated—or at least exaggerated—Till’s resistance
to their intimidation as a way of accounting for their own terrible
urge to murder him. There are no other living witnesses—or at
least none willing to confess. But the description in Wolf Whistle of
Till’s cool defiance, of his numbness to the immediate threat
to his life, invites skepticism if not incredulity” (58). Whitfield’s
hesitancy to take the confession at face value is refreshing. Too many
writers have accepted it uncritically.

Despite the soundness of Whitfield’s overall analysis, he elsewhere
relies too much on already existing sources and therefore perpetuates
inaccuracies that could have been avoided. He did not conduct interviews
with any of the participants, although he says in the acknowledgments
that Emmett Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley did not respond to
his requests for an interview. She denied to me that she had ever received
any such requests, and assured me that she would have been willing to
talk if she had. Had Whitfield talked to Till’s cousins Wheeler Parker, Simeon
Wright, or Curtis Jones, he would have learned that Jones was not at
the store to witness the incident between Till and Carolyn Bryant. Jones
had not yet arrived in Mississippi from Chicago. He quotes Jones’s
interview from the PBS documentary Eyes on the Prize where
Jones claims to have been there (17). Why Jones made that claim is puzzling,
yet Whitfield could have avoided it had he spoken with the cousins--and
others--who were there.

Much of the remainder of the book, while still touching on the Till
case, analyzes race relations since the 1955 murder. From published
interviews marking the 30th anniversary of the Till murder, he updates
readers on the lives of participants such as Mobley, Bryant, and Milam.

While not the definitive work on the case, and lacking needed detail,
it is the best work to date to place the murder in context. It helps
the reader understand why the slaying of a 14-year-old could have happened
when and where it did, and how a jury could acquit his obvious killers.
Future writers will have a hard time surpassing that.